Cross restored: ‘God is good’

The Roseboro First Baptist Church recently had the symbol of faith restored atop the church as their once fallen and damaged cross and steeple was completely repaired.

On Thursday, Steven Bland with Commercial Refinishers and Restorations was out with the crew to place the new cross and fix the steeple. The cross fell from the steeple back in September 2022 due to heavy winds that came through during Hurricane Ian.

“Back in September, there was a minor hurricane that came through,” Telfair Simpson, head of buildings and grounds, said. “There wasn’t a whole lot of rain, but there was wind — that’s when it got blown over and knocked off our steeple. The cross itself is actually 10 feet tall so when it’s up 100 feet in the air it doesn’t look that big, but when it was on the ground, it’s fairly large.”

It was then that the church began to search for someone that could do the repair, which lead them to Bland. It was a task that Simpson said beforehand had its challenges.

“We were able to get with our insurance company and they told us to find somebody to fix it and that was a difficult job,” he said. “We talked to and tried a half a dozen steeple companies and not a whole lot of them do steeple repairing.”

Bland was the one that then put the church in touch with Keith Sutton out of Warner Robins, Ga., who came down to access the possibility of the restoration. While it didn’t all go smoothly, it was doable and they were able to completely restore the damages.

“After Steve Bland put us in touch with a Keith Sutton, he was able to come look and see what happened,” Simpson said. “We then found out that it actually looked like the steeple might have been struck by lightning at some time, which weakened it. Then at the base where the cross sat on the steeple, the cross was hit and so when the wind came through it just kind of sheered it off.”

“So what they did was refabricated the whole thing and when they came last week to put it on, and as would happen, nothing went real smooth,” Simpson said with laugh. “When they started trying to attach it to the steeple, they found out what they had made was not going to fit exactly right. So we had to do a work around and got Vans Welding out of Salemburg to come fabricate some more piping on it so we could fasten it to steeple. Which, according to Keith, was a very normal issues to run into.”

The entire restoration, which started around November, was custom fabricated by Bland and his company, which has been in the church business since 1984.

“Being able to do this, to me, is huge because there’s nobody my age in this business anymore,” Bland said. “I’m 48 now and my dad had me up sanding on wood pieces and pews since I was 11. So, to be able to do this and help out the church, means a lot.”

As for how Roseboro First Baptist Church feels, parishioners were ecstatic, which was reflected in Simpson’s closing remarks.

“We’re very pleased to have it back up — we have it grounded in case it does get struck by lightning again and we feel that it’s going to be there for quite a while now,” he said. “It’s been a joint effort with our buildings and grounds committee to get it done. It’s taken a little bit of time, but these are things you cannot do very quick, but we’re very pleased with it. God is good and thanks to him we have our cross back on our church.”